I don't think I've written a post yet on Hive that has evolved quite like this one.
Earlier this week I had made plans to head out with 
So we headed out on a very cold evening and when we got there Chris setup at the front and I initially setup in a field behind the windmill. My intention for the evening was to shoot startrails rotating round polaris and so started doing some test shots to check settings and decide on the lens to use. I went with my first idea of the 8mm fisheye to get some scale to the shot. I had been shooting at 30 seconds, F2 but trying different ISO's to gauge the output, and was pleasantly surprised to see the below shooting star in frame after the exposure finished and in the perfect place right over the windmill. Now I can't take too much credit as this was a test shot, completely unplanned and 100% down to pure luck, but it was on my camera so I'm taking the win!
Shooting Star..
Once I got over my excitement I setup the star trails shot and went for a coffee. I was aiming to shoot for an hour so left the camera and headed back to chat with Chris. Below is the final result; I can't remember how many exposures, but it was less than I'd wanted, but maybe thats not a bad thing as with less stars its clearer, although my aim one day is to do a 6 hour trail!
Trails
Once the above had completed I then took the camera and shot from the front of the mill. I wasn't planning to stand out for another hour though as my extremities were losing feeling! So this is a stacked shot of 10 images, aligned in Photoshop and then tweaked slightly in Camera Raw, I hope you like..
Front
And that my friends is normally where the story would end, but today we have an epilogue!
So that evening I got home and excitedly quickly edited the shooting star shot and posted it on my Facebook page and that of the Retford information page. The following morning I received a message from a lady claiming to work for the BBC (British Broadcasting Corportaion, just in case anyone didn't know) saying that she loved the shot and could they put it on their Instagram page and tag me? Well Hell Yes you can!
I was sceptical at first, it was on a par with the spam email from an African Prince at first, singling you out to send you millions of of dollars! But I checked out her profile and it was legit.
Now has anyone else had one of those mornings where the work laptop won't work, your wife is poorly, you're trying to work, trying to edit photos on the quiet, get the wife ready to take her to the doctors, and buzzing that the BBC has just emailed you? No? Just me then, cos everything all seemed to happen out once yesterday morning and the adrenaline was really kicking in like 8 cups of espresso fedd into my system all at one! But as above the BBC lady was legit, I emailed 3 images over in the end, and good to her word, my shot was posted last night..
So this is my first Hive post that seems to have a clear start middle, end and epilogue!
I hope you enjoyed reading this and the images.
Kind Regards,
Neil Rushby